


Through the Window (Bet Your Fur)

by trippinglungs



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Humor, It never happened, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Slow Burn, combination of novel and movie verse, eddie also doesn't know how to talk about his feelings but he's TRYING, georgie is still alive!, richie doesn't know how to talk about his feelings, they're all 17/18, timeline is canon to movie verse though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 10:11:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12479196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trippinglungs/pseuds/trippinglungs
Summary: Eddie's door will never be open to Richie Tozier. Richie knows this. However, his bedroom window always is, and most days, that's good enough.





	Through the Window (Bet Your Fur)

"Stan, Stan the Man, I cannot believe you have withheld from me the information that there is an actual bird called a _Dickcissel_. Why would you not tell me this? I've never been more hurt in my entire life."

"Richie, shut up. This is why I didn't tell you."

"Stan. If your mother was a bird you know what kind of bird she'd be? She'd be a Great Tit."

" _Dude_."

"Well actually, I'd say she's more of an Imperial Shag in the bedroom, if ya know what I mean."

"Beep beep, Richie. I'm never letting you near a bird guide again."

Despite the annoyance in his tone, Stan can't help but laugh, and the rest of the group can't either. Even Eddie's grinning, shaking his head affectionately at his friends. It's fairly dark out as the seven of them begin to bike their way back from the quarry.

"Hey, Mike and I are gonna head downtown and see a movie. You guys in?" Beverly asks, always the first to include others in her plans.

Bill stops to think about whether anybody is around to watch Georgie, and upon realizing both his parents are home for the night, he agrees. Stan does as well, and Ben only protests slightly before Beverly persuades him with a promise that he can pick the movie.

"My mom would lay an egg, I think. She's been better about this shit recently but, y'know. Best not to push it." Eddie sighs, slightly disappointed. Though his mother had eased off of him after the placebo pill discovery, old habits died hard, and with her, often not at all. She still just about went into cardiac arrest if he wasn't home by 10.

"You know, I would, but I'm kinda exhausted. Screwing your mothers all night leaves a man drained. They're all such _sex fiends_ , they just can't get enough of me." Richie dramatically places a hand against forehead in mock fatigue, his eyebrows waggling suggestively.

Everyone groans in unison.

"Well, at least we won't get kicked out of the theater because someone won't shut up this time." Beverly offers.

"It was one time. Let me _live,_ Marsh."

After exchanging goodbyes with each other, the group parts ways. Mike, Ben, Bev, Stan, and Bill off to the movies, Richie and Eddie off to their respective homes.

As Richie approaches his front door, he notices it's unlocked. Maybe his dad had left to get something and had forgotten to lock the door behind him. He doesn't think too much of it as he walks in, humming some tune he'd heard on the radio earlier that day under his breath.

He doesn't notice his mother sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, until she speaks.

"Where have you been all day?"

Richie almost jumps in surprise. Around this time, his mother is usually passed out drunk. Well, she's drunk now, but she's not passed out. In fact, she’s _very_ awake, and apparently _very_ angry.

"Been out with friends, Ma." He answers, trying to suppress the anxiety rising up in his chest. _‘Here we go again._ ’

"Out where? What _fucking_ friends?" She's almost snarling at him. Maggie Tozier was never a physically intimidating woman, but Richie knows better than anyone in Derry that she has a solid set of lungs in her and she can scream loud enough to prove it.

"Just, just at the quarry. Y'know, Eddie and Mike? Bev? Bill and Stan? You know Bill and Stan, Ma, they helped bring me home once after Bowers whupped me up? Remember?" His tone is delicate, only ever used to placate her. She doesn't get like this often, but when she does, she takes it out on Richie most.

"Oh, the retard and the kike. Right, _those_ two." She spits, getting angrier by the second. Richie flinches, and in the very back of his mind, he knows that any moment she could reach over and beat him. She could reach over and beat him half to death and he wouldn't be able to do a damn thing, because even if she is a good for nothing useless old drunk, Richie Tozier would never raise his hand at a woman, let alone his own mother.

She hadn't always been like this. There had been a time where his mother had been kinder, didn’t have such unwarranted fits of rage, was actively involved in his grades and his life and his friends. He remembers her making iced tea for him and Bill _(the retard)_ with little mint sprigs in them- the ham sandwiches she laid out on the table. He remembers how she’d always been so polite, always made sure she had snacks out for Stan _(the kike)_ that were kosher. Maybe she hadn’t understood him or his friends, but she had _cared._

But then, his father’s cancer had rolled around.

Wentworth Tozier was, and always had been, an avid smoker. Had been smoking since he was 8, two years younger than Richie when he himself had started. The habit had caught up to him eventually, and he ended up with larynx cancer. The treatments had been working well enough for now, but they’d caught the cancer at such a late stage- there was only a 25 percent survival rate at best.

It had broken his mother. She didn’t know how she’d raise a teenage boy without him, pay the bills without him, get into bed every night without him, how she’d live a normal life at all. She started drinking, at first only when her husband wasn’t home, but in time she wouldn’t bother to hide it. Wentworth was so goddamn afraid. He was afraid of dying, he was afraid of what his son would become, and he was even more afraid of what his wife was _becoming_. The first time he came home to dinner cold on the kitchen table and his wife on the floor, knocked out in her own vomit, he had raised her up by the shirt collar and smacked her awake- hard, across the face.

So she drank, he hit her, Richie came home late or not at all, and that proved itself a routine too difficult to break.

Richie, so lost in his own thoughts, hadn’t even realized his mother was still speaking to him.

"I don't know who you think raised you, but you do _NOT_ get to waltz into _MY_ house at _THIS_ hour and think there will be no repercussions. Who the hell do you think you are?"

Richie shakes in a frantic combination of fear and anger. Everything had escalated so quickly- one moment he'd been at the quarry with his friends, laughing and having a wonderful time, and now he's here. He's here, and there's no way out of it. He grits his teeth, trying to keep his voice steady.

"It's not even ten yet, ma, it's just dark out, and I've been home later. Not that you would know."

"And what's that supposed to mean, huh?" She's screaming terribly now, and she's cornering him. He feels like a rabid dog, his eyes wild and hands trembling so hard he can hardly feel them. The moment she takes another step towards him, he loses his cool.

"It means that you're a worthless old hag who blacks out drunk every night before 9. It means you drink all day every day for weeks with no care in the world as to where the fuck I am, and then suddenly, it matters! It matters because you're bitter and alone and you have nobody better to fucking take your bullshit problems out on. You take it out on your fucking _son_ because you pull this shit with dad and he'd hit you, you bet your fur, dad would smack you into another fucking world but you know I won't, you know I would _never_ -"

She strikes him the way his father had struck her for the first time- across the mouth, so hard that his oversized teeth dig into his bottom lip. He can taste blood.

"Don't you _ever_ talk about your father like that. Don't you _dare._ " She hisses. She's holding her hand to her chest, it’s likely still stinging from how hard she’d hit him.

Richie wipes the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "It's the truth, ma. The facts are, you’re a drunk, he beats the living daylights outta you, and he’s gonna do that until the day he fucking dies. It's just that some of us don't have to drink to deal with it." He knows he’s going too far even as he says it, but he doesn’t bother to stop himself.

"Get out." Her voice is suddenly drained, exhausted. Richie stands in shock for a moment, before she picks the TV remote up off the sofa and hurls at him. "Get OUT!"

Richie does. He turns on his heels and leaves, and he's crying before the door can fully close behind him. He stands there and collects himself, taking deep breaths with his face buried in his palms until his stifled sobs fade into labored breathing. It takes him a moment to remember that everyone is probably still out, still having a good time. Usually, he'd stay with Bill, whose parents take to him most, but that was likely out of the question for tonight. He hates having to do it, anyway, hates being such a nuisance.

Unfortunately, Richie also hates the notion of sleeping on the porch. He grabs his bike and heads over to Eddie's, knowing he’s the only one who’ll be home. He pedals as fast as he can, and before he can change his own mind about it, he's dropping his bike on the lawn and climbing up to Eddie's windowsill, knocking against the glass.

Eddie opens the window in a sleepy haze. Usually, he'd tell him off, give him a real verbal lashing, but the moment he sees the dried tear tracks on Richie's flushed cheeks and the blood on Richie's lip, the words die in his mouth.

Richie climbs in as quietly as he can. He takes off his shoes and tries to explain himself, or at least, say something, anything. All that comes out is, "Mind if I smoke?"

'Yes,' Eddie thinks to himself. _'I do mind, it could trigger my asthma_ (even though Eddie didn't really have asthma and his medication was just tapwater with a dash of camphor and he knew that just as well as anybody else) _I hate the smell and the dangers of secondhand smoke are so severe and I could die, you know, I really could.'_ But he tells himself that smoking is just how Richie winds down, and that's what Richie seems to really need right now, and so in spite of himself he nods solemnly.

Richie pulls a pack and a lighter from his pocket and leans back onto Eddie's bed. His hair cascades out around his head as a flame flickers and he takes a drag. His thick dark brown curls look black against the pristine white of Eddie's pillowcase. His gaze is directed at the ceiling but his eyes are glossed over, unfocused- neither here nor there. He looks like a porcelain doll, Eddie thinks, motionless aside from the occasional exhale.

Neither of them speak. The silence is thicker than the smoke seeping from Richie's lips.

"The smell. The cigarette smell," Eddie begins weakly. "It'll get into the sheets. You're contaminating my room, you dick." There's no bite to the statement, just a light nudge at Richie's side.

He doesn't even smile. Just mumbles a quiet 'sorry'. Takes another drag. Eddie has been afraid of _heights the dark diseases saliva earthworms grey water_ and just about everything else under the sun. Richie's silence scares him more than all of them combined. He tries again, softer this time.

"Richie, what happened?" More silence. "Richie, please."

"Begging suits you, Eds. Your mom was way better at it last night though." Eddie doesn't even have time to roll his eyes, tell him to _please just this once be serious_ , before Richie starts up again. "See? Look. I'm fine. Classic Tozier. Haha, mom jokes. Shitty nicknames. I'm fucking hilarious, Eddie. Sign me up as a fucking birthday clown, could make some real profit, really lay the rent on the table."

Eddie's heart doesn't break, it shatters. He can almost feel the shards in his chest.

"That's not all you are Richie. You don't have to be that all the time."

"You're right. I'm also the shitty impressions right? That's a big one. I haven't been a big fan of them recently though. If I have to hear myself say _'cheerio, ol' chap'_ one more time I'll gouge my eardrums out." Richie laughs bitterly. Ash is falling from the cigarette onto Eddie's blanket, it's dark and messy and ugly, but Eddie does his best not to notice.

"I like the British voice." Eddie offers, insincerely but compassionately.

Richie fixes his gaze at Eddie, and finally, thank god, there's a hint of a smile. "No you don't."

There's silence again. Richie, done with smoking for now, passes Eddie his cigarette. Eddie stands up, puts it out against his windowsill, tosses it out.

"Yeah, you're right," He replies quietly as he sits back down onto his bed. "I don't. But I do like you, Richie. And if that means liking your mom jokes and your awful nicknames and your voices then I'll like those too. But Richie, you. You have to let me know what the fuck is going on. You can't leave me in the dark like that. I'm scared."

Richie sits up, running a hand through his hair. "Well, lucky us. I'm scared too, Eds. We're both a couple of pussies. Scared out of our wits."

They sit side by side like that for a long time. Eddie realizes he won't be able to get much more out of him, and there’s no use pushing it.

"You can stay here for tonight. Just be out by 7, alright? I don't want my mom losing her shit if she catches you in my bed with me." Eddie can almost hear her reaction, _'Eddie you can’t be sharing a bed with a boy no not like those fags not like those dirty dirty queers you're not like them not dirty like them Eddie you know what happened to Adrian Mellon threw that nasty fag off the side of a bridge threw him right off just because of a silly hat just because he was a silly queer and you're not like them not dirty not with Richie especially not with that dirty dirty boy.'_ He shudders at the thought.

Richie quietly agrees. So they lay down beside each other, the sound of their breathing nearly echoing in the room.

"Eds?” Richie murmurs sleepily. “It was my mom. She just. She was drunk and she said some shit. I'll try and explain it tomorrow, alright?"

Richie's voice is so small, so quiet, so childlike. Eddie knows what it's like to feel that way- to be so afraid of the woman who made you. He knows the resentment, the confusion, the longing for a mother who would love wholly and completely and normally.

"Yeah Richie. That's okay. Try and get some rest."

Richie's asleep beside him before he can even finish the sentence.

**Author's Note:**

> i know this first chapter was r e a l l y heavy but i promise there's fluff to come!!! i hope you like it, and feel free to let me know what you'd like to see in future chapters!


End file.
